Spotlight on Trish Greenan

21 November 2013

This week the spotlight is on Trish Greenan, Director, UCL Consultants Ltd

What is your role and what does it involve?

I am a Director at UCL Consultants Ltd (UCLC). UCLC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of UCL that offers a full lifecycle consultancy support service to UCL academic staff wishing to carry out consultancy work, with access to UCL facilities and support staff.

It’s our job to facilitate consultancy, so that academics can concentrate on the delivery of their expertise.

How long have you been at UCL and what was your previous role?

I’ve been at UCL for just over 11 years. I started working in what was then known as the Contract Research Office in Research Administration and I moved to UCLC in 2008. Before that I worked in publishing.

What working achievement or initiative are you most proud of?

I am really proud of the successful delivery of the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) project. UCLC worked with ICANN to evaluate applications for new individual generic top level domain names – so in addition to geographic names such as .istanbul, corporate names or generic names such as .pizza there will soon be new web addresses in non-Latin scripts e.g. Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese and Russian.

This was achieved using UCLC’s project management services and a combination of UCL’s expertise in linguistics and computing, working with Chris Dillon in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, to help create a new generation of top-level domain names.

I am looking forward to seeing the results in general use early next year. It’s gratifying to turn on the radio as I did last week and to hear how London will soon be getting its very own domain name, knowing that UCLC played a key part in making that happen.

Tell us about a project you are working on now which is top of your to-do list

As part of UCLC’s strategy for growth we are focusing on four key areas – Testing and Analysis services, Training and Short Courses, Academic Consultancy and the provision of Expert Witness services.

In respect of the latter, we already help some UCL academics to make use of their skills and expertise in providing expert reports and attending at court in civil and criminal cases and we’d like to encourage and assist more to do so. I’m currently organising expert witness training courses for those who may be interested in this kind of work or are involved already and these will be run early next year.

Recent changes in the law relating to reduced immunity for expert witnesses mean that it’s important for individuals to have the right contract and professional indemnity insurance in place, as well as to be aware of his or her responsibilities to the court, and UCLC can help with this.

The training UCLC will provide will further enhance and equip our academics to provide the highest standard of service to courts and clients.

What is your favourite album, film and novel?

I like to run and I am guilty of listening to a lot of David Guetta-style dance music on my iPod for motivation (my daughter finds this both embarrassing and hilarious) but if I had to pick an album it would be Dolly Parton’s Greatest Hits – I am a fan of old-school country and western.

Sorry, I can’t pick one film – favourites are The Wicked Lady, Kind Hearts and Coronets and Goodfellas.

Books would be The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway/In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.

What is your favourite joke (pre-watershed)?

Q. Where do cows go on holiday?

A. Moo Zealand (with thanks to my six year old).

Who would be your dream dinner guests?

Right now it would be five of the six people with whom I shared digs for most of my university career. We had some brilliant times during that period. Over the years a combination of children, careers and geography have prevented most attempts at a full reunion so it would be great to get them all round a table and have a dry sherry or two.

The sixth member of the group – and the only male – would not be invited, as I tend to see him quite a bit. We’re married, so on this particular evening he’d be babysitting…

What advice would you give your younger self?

Relax!

What would it surprise people to know about you?

Apart from the country and western?

I am really quite good at keepy-uppy.

What is your favourite place?

Sitting in the sun, at the top of Pen y Fan in the Brecon Beacons, after a long walk to get there.